Theses on polygamy and monogamy by Viktor Leberecht – Thesis 2

Theses on polygamy and monogamy – Thesis 2

No one – not a state, religion, society, or some other institution, group or person – has a right to order a person or even use coercion to enforce how many people he / she may love, with how many people he / she may have concurrent sexual relationships and with whom and with how many people he / she creates a family. The precondition is that all parties voluntarily and knowingly enter into these relationships, and that this freely elected form of relationship is based on equal rights for all partners and causes no harm neither to the directly involved parties or to other persons.

This thesis follows from the arguments in thesis 1 and from my understanding that laws or other regulations banning a certain behavior may be imposed only to prevent harm (see thesis 3). As stated in thesis 1, the legally effective authorization of multiple relationships, whether in the form of polyamory or polygamy, would not create any damage, neither to individuals nor to the society.

On the contrary the admission of multiple relationships might help to prevent a lot of unnecessary damage, in particular many divorces stemming from sexual infidelity could be avoided. Instead, there would be more durable marriages and families. These polygamous families would probably have more offspring and provide a stable family environment over a longer term than the monogamous marriages, which in western societies mostly divorve after 5 years. In my article Evidence-based policy would mean to legalize polygamy, I point out that policy – if it were based on evidence – would have to realize that monogamous marriage as the only and by law coercively enforced model for long-lasting relationships is not working for most people and needs to be supplemented by other options.

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Viktor Leberecht

Viktor Leberecht is my pseudonym for my work as a freelance author. I am a studied historian, as well as a trained and experienced journalist.
I have lived in a polyamorous relationship with a woman who is married to another man since 2003.
I write about polyamory and its marital form, polygamy, to inform, refute prejudice, and to promote the social acceptance of polyamory and polygamy.
I am committed to multiple relations within the framework of human rights, which, of course, means the same rights for everybody.